> 
> After much experimentation I have finally succesfully
> created an amanda backup. But I have not been able
> to figure if these features are possible.

Congratulations and welcome to my personal favorite backup system.

> 
> 
> 1) I currently have enabled 4 dumps at a time. 
> What I understand this meaning is the option 
> inparallel does 4 cleint dumps at a time.
> If I have a disklist of 18 disk does that mean
> that all 18 disk get backed up to one tape or
> does that mean that every 4 disk get backed up to tape.

This means that up to four dumps are going from the client to the holding
disk at a time (no-holding disks go straight to tape, don't worry about that
yet.) All of the disks being backed up will go to tape regardless of the
inparallel value.

> 
> 2) When sendszie is executed to estimate how big a directory
> or disk is is it possible to have sendzie work with the process
> that dumps to tape to judge if a directory is to big for that tape
> and load another tape for that backup

AMANDA can't handle any partition that has a level 0 size bigger than one
tape. The planner program collects the sizes of all of the backups to be
done, and then bumps some up or down a level to (a) make sure all needed
level 0 backups are done, and (b) fit as much data as possible on the tape.
(This is why an accurate tapetype is important, and hardware compression
isn't all it's cracked up to be.)

If you set "runtapes 2" in amanda.conf, AMANDA will spread the backups over
the two tapes. I believe the version in development (2.5) will be able to
split a partition across tapes. The current version cannot, and if it runs
out of tape during a partition, it starts that partition from the beginning
on the next tape, to insure it has a good backup. 

> 
> 3) Is it possible just to do fiolesize estimateions before issueing
> amdump. What I am trying to accomplish is to do estimations and 
> have amdump pick up were it left off to save time.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. 

Are you trying to run the estimates at 1:00 and the dump at 3:00? What if a
large file appears in the meantime? 

Are you trying to resume a backup that was interrupted because it ran out of
tape? The remaining partitions are already stored on the holding disk and
can be flushed to the next tape. 

Are you trying to find out how much tape AMANDA will want tonight? You could
run amdump with no tape in the drive, and let it run everything to the
holding disk (if you have room). The report will then show the size of the
backup, and you can then amflush the backups to tape. (This is also how some
people use one tape for more than one days' worth of backups if they are
DESPARATELY short on tapes.)

Are you trying to use two different sizes of tape in the same AMANDA
configuration? You might be better off separating the tapes into separate
configurations by size, and using each size in a completely separate AMANDA
configuration, backing up separate machines. 

> 
> 4) In regards to number 1 to elevate this problem I have been doing 
> amdump "configureationname" partition. I am doing this for each disk 
> in my disk list is it possible to have certain disk go to one tape
> and then push otehr disk to go on the second tape.
> 

amdump only takes one parameter, the name of the configuration. I expect
your partiion parameter is being ignored. Again, if you use runtapes 2,
AMANDA will put backups on two tapes  as needed. 

> 
> Thanks for all your help
> 
> Craig Hancock
> 

Glad to help, but if you can run an English-language spell check on your
messages before posting, it will save everyone time in reading and replying.
Thanks. 

Regards, 

Paul